Beyond Moussaka—and All Else

The best restaurant in New York with the fewest number of critic’s stars is almost certainly Milos, a gloriously upscale taverna on 55th Street in Manhattan.

I have a few theories why this is so. The food is Greek, which most people (including critics) assume should be cheap. The fish is typically grilled, a cooking technique that most people (including critics) rarely associate with fine dining. Virtually everything on the menu is simple, barely embellished, and nobody (including critics) expects to pay a lot for that. By now, you might have guessed: A meal at Milos, except for the fid-price specials, is expensive.

Here’s an example: A whole loup de mer (lavraki in Greek), just under three pounds, cooked in sea salt, and sprinkled with lemon-accented olive oil, went for $147.94 at my meal last week. It came without accompaniments, other than capers, and fed three. Was it worth it? Oh, my, was it ever.

To me, Milos in New York is one of the best Greek restaurants in the world, rivaled only by Milos in Montreal and Milos in Athens. Actually, Milos in Athens, which has a more extensive menu and a more lavish venue, might be the most distinctive of the three for those reasons alone.

Milos looks classy and feels unpretentious. It’s airy, with an abundance of natural light, rare in Manhattan. The intention, it seems, is to give a feeling of dining outdoors, and it’s accentuated by the light, the windows, the height of the room, the white umbrellas over a few tables, and the billowing white curtains that seem very Melina Mercouri.

The owner of the Milos empire is Costas Spiliadis, a Greek who emigrated to Canada when he was nineteen and opened Milos in Montreal in 1979. His seafood back then was purchased at the Fulton Fish Market in New York, simply because he didn’t think the wholesale fish markets in Montreal were good enough. His quest for flawlessness could only be satisfied by driving to New York several times a week, a 750-mile round trip, in a Chevrolet Impala borrowed from one of his waiters. Ultimately, he had to buy the car because the engine was worn out and the upholstery smelled like fish.

Spiliadis was never a chef, but he made himself one. His recipes are traditional and they tend to be beautifully ecuted. He was never a restaurateur, but he made himself one of the best (if also one of the least-publicized). His philosophy is simple: Combine the best products of Greece with the highest cultural and culinary standards of Greece. Many fine-dining restaurants receiving acclaim lately are those adhering to the same principles: Simplicity. Purity. Perfection. Identity. He does fly in products from Greece, which makes his restaurant as non-locavore as can be, but that’s because he wants Milos to be Greek and not Greek-American.

Greek food in this country has rarely been popular or even very good. Occasionally a promising place opens, followed by a eager newspaper headline reading something like "Beyond Moussaka." Then the restaurant fades, and the trend is over, as dead as Socrates. Milos in New York, which opened in 1997, has remained steadfast. Spiliadis was once advised to promote it as a "Mediterranean restaurant" when Mediterranean became fashionable, but not only did he refuse such advice, he basically refused to promote the restaurant at all. His customer-base consists mainly of admirers, of which I am one.

I suspect a considerable amount of his business comes as a result of specializing in seafood. New Yorkers have always been willing to pay lavishly for fish as magnificent as his. Much of it is wild, from European waters. I always assumed that the fish offered on his preposterously inexpensive $24.07 prix-fi luncheon menu had to be farm-raised, simply because you can’t buy anything off a Greek fishing boat for $24, except maybe an anchovy. In fact, one of his competitors has insisted to me that not all the Milos fish is wild, but the restaurant insists that nothing is off a farm.

The a la carte items include a ten-ounce prime filet for $48, fish soup for two for $120, and langouste (spiny lobster) for $85 a pound. As I said, not cheap. In addition, there are four-course, $49 meals offered pre-theater, post-theater, and all day Sunday. The best starter in the house, available on all menus, is grilled octopus. His is unmatched—soft, slightly chewy, barely charred, and accented with a touch of Greek olive oil and thyme. Among the fid-price menu main courses, I have two favorites: two double-thick lamb chops that always taste prime to me, although the menu makes no such claim; and grilled loup de mer, as soft, sweet, and immaculate as fish gets.

The only seafood dish at Milos that doesn’t captivate me is whole grilled shrimp—fresh, fat, crunchy, and garnished with parsley, lemon, and olive oil. They go for about $8 each. They’re remarkable, but for that amount of money I’d select more exotic fish, and Milo offers an abundance of those. Over the years, dishes that have become my favorites include pureed fava beans (an appetizer) and Canadian scallops (a luncheon-menu appetizer). To those intimidated by octopus, I recommend the crabcake. The tomato salad, which is similar to a Greek salad, is always well-made but only a genuine treat when tomato season arrives.

Service is good, particularly at tableside, where the waitstaff has embraced the casual-but-correct concept of taverna dining. The same cannot always be said of the gatekeepers out front, who seem to be made of sterner stuff. The waiters do a good job recommending wines, which do not come cheap. I tried a 2008 Savary Chablis Fourchaume ($75) that nicely lived up to the excellent reputation of the vintage, and a 2008 Gerovassiliou Malagousia ($65), a well-made, rather lush Greek white from an ancient grape I’d never tasted. I picked it because I knew the winery to be good. When I asked our waiter for the story behind the grape, he replied, "Who knows what they were talking about back then?"

Desserts were disappointing on my last visit. Over the years I’ve only enormously admired one, an incomparable combination of Greek honey and Greek-style yogurt, although the other selections were always satisfying. Not this time. Walnut cake, baklava and the tiny donuts called loukoumades were disappointing—instead of tasting informal and unfussy, they seemed carelessly prepared. But there’s always that yogurt, the thickest and richest imaginable, topped with thyme honey from the island of Kythera. It’s to Milos what sachertorte is to the Hotel Sacher in Vienna.

A friend of mine, eating at Milos for the first time, told me after our dinner that the restaurant had come into his life precisely when he desperately needed it. He said, "I’m weary of restaurant snobbery. I don’t need to eat crispy pig’s trotter or pickled ramps at every bloody meal, not to mention mindlessly overrated pizza." Should you dine at Milos and order a meal of octopus, loup de mer, and honey and yogurt, I am pretty certain you’ll never think about fine-dining in quite the same way again.

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